Post Punk Kitchen Forum

I got a pressure canner!! I have no idea how to use it, but I'm going to can some apple sauce and mustard pickles today. Hopefully I don't burn down my kitchen.

i tell you, if i could get ball jars here i would totally can like nuts. but all we can get are the jars that are like jam jars, with a basic one-piece turn top, and i just don't seem to do as well with them.

How wonderful! if you've already done your canning for today, i hope everything turned out well. I got a pressure canner last year with no hands on expirience using one.If you haven't started pressure canning yet, i hope these tips make life easier for you.you are much less likely to burn down your kitchen than have your jars start siphoning inside the canner. this means the pressure fluctuates and all the lovely canned goods go squirting out of the jar, losing liquid and ruining the seal. So don't be scared, just make sure you have some nice music to listen to in the kitchen because you are going to be spending your time constantly watching the pressure gauge. main tips i did not take seriously but should have. yes you do have to vent the pot ( read the guide that came with it for specifics) do not let the pressure go up and down quickly, if you find out that the pressure is starting to go way up turn down your heat and be patient, dont get worried and start letting out pressure manually, thats when the big pressure changes start the siphoning. It will go down on its own if you just turn down the heat. if you realise that the pressure has gone down, turn up the heat and let it slowly get back to pressure, I usually add a few min to the time if this happens just to make sure the jars are cooked enough. Lastly, do not be too eager to take your jars out. dont take the vent weght off until the pressure goes to zero, then after you've taken off the vent weight and waited another 10-15 min, then you can take the lid off and let the jars cool for another 10 min at least before you lift them out of the pot. the wait is interminable but the joy of having all your jars seal and stay sealed is worth it! if i had known these tips all my blueberries would have sealed not just 2 of six.

I canned tomato sauce, red pepper sauce, crushed tomatoes, plum jam, peach jam, apricot jam, figs jam, applesauce and pickles

Thanks!! My canner said not to do pickles under pressure (not sure why?), so I just used it as a big pot to water bathe them. I don't have a gauge on mine, just the three different weights.

i bet the pickles get mushy in a pressure canner due to the extra high heat. three diff weights and no gauge? i've not seen one like that. I'm glad it came with instructions! i hope your pickles are delicious!

apple sauce, apple butter, and cranberry sauce! Hubz and I picked 15 pounds of cranberries we found around a lake. yay free food!
I reached my goal of canning enough food to fill all the jars everyone gave me. It seems like as soon as you tell someone you can food, they have jars to give away. I think I had about 60 jars (mixed sizes).
I want to do more apple sauce and cranberry sauce. I'll have to eat some of the stuff we already made first.

I’m making Irish gift baskets for Christmas.

Today was Irish Whiskey Marmalade day .

Tomorrow I’ll try Darina Allen’s Spiced Cranberries followed by a few batches of Irish Coffee Syrup from her Store Up Sauces for Christmas Newsletter.

I thought I'd revive this thread so that we can discuss canning and preserving things for the holidays! I've never canned anything before, but we've decided to make a bunch of different pickles and jams to give to people as gifts this year for Christmas. I have The Joy of Pickling, and I just ordered The Joy of Jams, Jellies & Other Sweet Preserves, Vegan Food Gifts, and the Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving... I might have gone a little crazy with the book purchases.

Anyway, so far from the pickle book, we have these recipes in the running: Chow chow, corn relish, cranberry ketchup, some type of cucumber pickle (not sure which one yet), and jalapeno rings that I'm planning on making using amber agave nectar instead of honey.

I figure we'll make a couple of jams as well and maybe a few mixes for "just add water" type recipes, but we'll see how it goes once I look over the other books. Where I live (in the middle of the desert), farmers' markets aren't really popular and so although we kinda missed the boat on canning stuff in late summer when it was overly abundant, I still have access to large amounts of produce at Sam's/Costco and there are pretty good produce specials at my local Sprouts. My partner got overly ambitious and decided he wants to get a pressure canner so that we can make recipes for low-acid stuff, but I told him this first year people might feel safer if we went with foods that aren't as risky, since we're new to all of this... Haha.

Does anyone have an idea for what to do with persimmons? I have like 10 lb of them and I'm tired of persimmon cakes, muffins, etc. and we don't really eat jelly enough to make persimmon jams.

what about chutney? like a mango chutney, but with persimmons.

I'm canning a bunch of stuff for my parents for Christmas! I've done strawberry basil jam, blood orange and whiskey marmalade, and the red wine chocolate fudge sauce from Vegan Food Gifts. I think next will be the roasted tomato chipotle salsa from the Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving (which I just got last week).

Also I'm pretty sure we've figured out that the fruit trees in our backyard are greengage plums, so I'm all ears if anyone has a jam recipe or something that uses them.